by Dante King
Oddus slapped his belly and looked around delightedly. “Yes! Yes, it is! Ah, I was forgetting that the War of the Stars was part of Earth’s history! Yes, I captured a mage once—an Earthling who owed me money. He was deep in my debt after cultivating an unhealthy addiction to snowflake serum.”
I was willing to bet that the person, whoever it had been, had probably been introduced to this snowflake serum while sitting around this very bar, enjoying what he thought was probably a harmless titty-show.
“And what?” I asked. “This mage offered to redecorate your club for you?”
“No,” Oddus said. “No. He had no money. The only item of value he had was this strange reel. A reel that consisted of many tiny pictures. He said that if we constructed a light box, we could watch and listen to a part of Earth’s history.”
I laughed then. I couldn’t help it.
“He told you that Star Wars was part of Earth’s history?” I snorted. “Shit, that’s a good one.”
“He was lying?” the Yeti asked.
I shrugged. “I guess it’s sort of a part of our history. Just not in the traditional sense of the word.”
Oddus waved my words aside. “Immaterial. It was the most splendid thing that I had ever seen.”
“And so you remodeled your club?” I asked.
“Of course.”
I nodded slowly. “It almost makes what’s going to happen next a bit of a shame, Oddus, you Falstaffian fuck.”
“Have you come to a decision?” Oddus said, a shit-eating grin spread across his big, fat face.
“Yeah,” I said, “I have.”
I conjured the black crystal staff to my hand and let loose with a Frost Shard spell.
The five-foot-long shards of solid ice flew across the space that separated me and the Yeti. They traveled so fast that there was barely time for Oddus to register anything more than surprise. They slammed into the huge creature’s broad head, punching through fur and skin, flesh and bone. Despite the potential smallness of the target, at least one of the ice needles must have found the Yeti’s brain because he was thrown backward with barely a sound. Blue blood and gray matter splattered out of the back of Oddus’s skull, covering the liquor distilling contraption behind the bar. The Yeti collapsed backward across the bar, the one eye that hadn’t been punctured by an icicle staring unseeing at the ceiling.
No one stirred a finger for at least three seconds. They were three seconds that were filled with such intense mental calculation that I was surprised I couldn’t hear the dull, fitful skrit-skrit-skrit of neurons rubbing together.
At the sudden execution of their boss, the band in the corner had screeched to a halt in the middle of a song. With resigned acceptance, they trooped off, exiting stage left.
Then, as if a group decision had been made, there was a flurry of movement as a load of the assembled criminals reached for mana-pistols, mana-rifles, or flipped over tables to take cover behind. Others threw themselves over the bar.
I dived left, into the cover of a low partitioning wall. As I rolled into cover, bright blue mana rounds ate up the ground where I had just been standing. Stone dust erupted into the air as chunks of the stairs disintegrated under the hail of magical gunfire. The maître d' station blew to smithereens, bits of polished wood pinwheeling through the air.
From my place of safety, I watched Leah cartwheel sideways to avoid a spray of mana-rifle fire. The blue projectiles punched up the wall as whoever was trying to mow her down followed her with their finger on the trigger. Leah cackled with mad delight as she landed in a cat-like stance. I noticed that a jeweled set of knuckle-dusters had appeared on her right hand, and I wondered whether this was her vector.
A moment later, that question was answered.
The most recent addition to the Chaosbane clan thrust her fist out at the one of the sly-faced elves behind the bar and let loose with a spell that looked like nothing more than a burst of glittering wind.
The spell struck the elf right in the face. He roared in pain and staggered backward, scrabbling at his eyes. His mana-pistol fell at his feet and went off, punching a sizzling hole through the cranium of a squat gnoll off to his right, dropping him. The elf smashed backward into the distilling equipment. He and the barman, who had grabbed an axe from somewhere, were engulfed in a deluge of whatever red spirit had been brewing away inside. Judging by the fumes that washed over me, it was at least eighty-percent alcohol.
The effect that this eye-watering scent had on Igor was electric. He straightened and fired out a blast of Chaos Magic that turned a few of our enemies into frogs.
“Wow!” the Rune Mage said, looking down at his hands.
“How the hell did you manage that?” I yelled, ducking out of cover to send a Storm Bolt at a gargoyle dressed in an ill-fitting suit. The stony-skinned devil backflipped out of the path of my spell, and the table he had been hiding behind burst apart in a shower of splinters.
“No idea, old bean!” Igor said happily. One of the frogs that had been a pistol-toting goon only a few seconds before tried to make a hop for the door, but Mort stepped nimbly across and crushed it under his heel.
“I’m going for Janet!” I bellowed over the noise of the firefight.
Mort nodded and fired a twisting silver and black spell at another Elvish man firing a mana-rifle at Leah. The spell hit the elf in the arm and vanished his limb all the way up to the shoulder. He screamed and collapsed in a dead faint.
I jumped to my feet, vaulted the low wall I had been hiding behind, and ran through the room. Bolts of concentrated mana flashed around me, zipping past me as I made a dash for Janet.
Behind me, the three Chaosbanes made life a living and unpredictable hell for the majority of Oddus’ men who were still standing. There was a deafening explosion off to my right as Enwyn hit another one of the distillation tanks with a fireball. Whatever Oddus had his boys brewing in those things, looked like it could have been used as rocket fuel. I felt the heat wash over me, even as I pelted across the room toward Janet.
Something flashed over my head and crashed through a table in front of me. It was a burning corpse. I jumped over the grizzly lump of charred former-dwarf and hopped onto the stage.
“Behind you!” Janet yelled as I approached her.
I ducked, and a sword blade flashed over my head in a blur of silver, wielded by red-eyed minotaur. She was a broad-shouldered beast, wearing a crimson dress which matched her eyes. She wasn’t my type, even with the pretty silver dangly things attached to the tips of her horns like earrings. To be fair, the way that she was trying to hack my head off did nothing to endear her to me either.
I jumped backward out of the way of a scything blow that would have turned my innards into outters. I brought my crystal staff up to ward off another strike, and another, then parried a third stab to the side. The minotaur showgirl, or whoever the hell she was, stumbled off balance.
That’s where fighting in high heels gets you, I thought.
I thrust my staff and struck the minotaur in the rump and used my Crystallize spell. In the blink of an eye, the sword-flourishing minotaur was encased in transparent crystal. She toppled off the stage and landed on top of a squint-eyed gnome who had been racing in to help her take me down. If the hideous crunching sound and sudden high-pitched screams were anything to go by, the minotaur statue had broken both the gnome’s legs.
I turned to Janet and flashed her a smile, running my eyes over her.
“Nice getup,” I quipped. “Do you come here often?”
“Would you get me the hell out of here, Mauler,” Janet said, though she was grinning while she said it.
“That’s a bit forward of you, isn’t it?” I replied.
A burst of mana-pistol fire raked over our heads, blowing chunks out of the ceiling so that I could spy the night stars through the holes. I twisted, threw myself flat on my back as another couple of shots whizzed past my ears, and then let my attacker have a chair in the side of the head at a
bout thirty miles per hour. I used my Telekinesis spell to fling the chair and smoke the prick with the mana-pistol, knocking him out cold, face pressed to the floor.
I hopped up, pressed the tip of my vector to the rope that bound Janet, and used a very localized Fireball spell to burn through the thick bindings. Within fifteen seconds, Janet was free. I set her on the floor, and her legs promptly gave under her.
“Shit,” she said.
“Are you all right?” I asked, watching Leah Chaosbane flipping and spinning around the room like a gymnast from hell.
“Yeah,” Janet grunted. “My legs are dead. That fat, hairy dude that you iced forced some potion down my neck. Made me feel woozy and floppy.”
“I was wondering how they managed to get you into that outfit,” I said.
Leah kicked the legs out from one goon, sending him crashing to the deck. The female Chaosbane then sprayed more of her glittery magic across the backs of the heads of two brutish-looking bandits who were busy trying to blast Igor into pieces with their mana-rifles. This time, the glittering spray of magic stuck to the flesh of the two enemies. Their hair shriveled, and their skin blistered in great, vile bubbles. They collapsed, writhing and shrieking.
“Acid Glitter! Can you believe such a spell exists!” Leah whooped as she kicked the man she had knocked to the ground so hard that he slid backward about ten yards.
Another overeager fellow, this one with the dark greenish-brown skin of an Earth Elemental, ran at Leah. He was holding a big hammer in his brawny arms. The look on his face said, as plain as day, that he planned on using it to put a dent in Leah’s head.
Leah snatched up a bottle from the bar and tossed it at the oncoming Earth Elemental. As it spun through the air, she shot it with a globe of sparkling air, exploding it in a hail of glass slivers. She clapped her hands excitedly as her attacker went down.
“Can you believe there’s a female Chaosbane?” Janet asked, trying and failing to stand again.
“Well, I guess there’d have to be. Unless they were all made up of spontaneously generating dudes. I wouldn’t put it past the Chaosbanes to work something like that out.”
We watched as Leah picked up a discarded mana-pistol. She studied it while searing blue mana rounds passed so closely by her that her pink hair stood on end. Then, she looked up and delivered three pinpoint headshots to a trio of enemies who’d taken up a position near where the band had been playing.
Leah tossed the pistol aside, caught Janet and I looking at her, and said, “They’re no fun those things, are they? Janet, you’re looking fab-u-lous, sugar! Justin, this place is a bit on the drab side. How about we make a move?”
There was another flash of fire from across the room. Enwyn had cast another Fireball. A human shape, wreathed in flames, tottered behind Leah and collapsed in a pathetic huddled ball.
I scooped up Janet in my arms. “Yeah, this place is dead. Let’s roll.”
With Mortimer and Igor raining magic down on the few remaining henchmen, we came to the gaping hole in the wall where the door had once been. I set Janet on her feet outside and told Leah to wait with her. Then I ran back in to help Mort and Igor.
“Get outside, boys!” I yelled, picking up a fallen mana-rifle and squeezing a few shots off at a troll behind the bar. The rounds left smoking scars across the polished stone of the countertop.
“You’re sure, Justin?” Mort said.
“Go. I’ve got us covered.”
The two Chaosbanes ducked out through the door and out into the night.
I emptied the mana-rifle at the handful of remaining bad guys, forcing them back into cover. Then, I hopped to my feet and conjured a Frostfire Golem.
“Hold them here,” I said.
The enormous, hulking frost-covered apparition blinked its lifeless, burning eyes at me and started walking toward the remaining goons. They responded by firing their mana-pistols and mana-rifles at my magically conjured diversion, blowing chunks out of its blocky body.
While they were occupied, I made my escape. I lay a couple of Arcane Mines in the doorway, just for luck, as I left. As I ducked through the door, I cast an eye back and saw my Frostfire Golem lay its hands on one of the four remaining bad guys and tear him apart like a freshly baked loaf.
Back out on the street, I found the three Chaosbanes, along with Janet and Enwyn, huddled in a group and surrounded by a collection of stern-faced, uniformed safety officers.
“Is what this member of the Academy said true?” one of the safety officers asked. She was a tall, imposing woman with a muscular bare arms, a shaved head, and the icy blue skin that denoted a Jotunn—a Frost Giant. “There was a selection of high value bounty targets within who kidnapped your friend?”
“That’s right.” I pointed at the building behind me. Smoke was billowing from out of the door now. It looked like the numerous fires had joined forces to create a nice little inferno in there. “That place was crawling with guys of all sorts who had bounties on their heads. Just ask Mortimer Chaosbane here, he’s a registered and renown bounty hunter.”
Mort looked embarrassed and self-conscious about being thus singled out, but he pushed his hood back and said, “It’s all true.”
“You’re the Mortimer Chaosbane,” the tall Jotunn woman said. There was a note of reverential respect in her voice.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Mort said.
“I’ve heard of you. I’ve got a subscription to Bounty Hunters Monthly. Damn, I bet those guys didn’t know what hit ‘em, huh?” the Frost Giant said.
Mort, one of the most literal people that I had ever met, frowned and said, “Spells. It was spells that hit them mostly.”
There was a short scream and then a body came crashing through the front window of The Tender Trap, tangled in the thick velvet curtains that had screened the inside of the club from view.
“You got your friend out okay, though?” said the Jotunn with the shaved head. “No other innocent parties inside?”
A shower of mana bullets sprayed out of the broken window, riddling the Kebab and Evangelical Brownie Club opposite.
“Nope, no one else inside,” I said. “All the dancers made it out all right.”
I felt a release inside of myself as the mana that had been keeping my Frostfire Golem alive dissipated. That meant that the golem was down.
“I think we might be about to see the last of the henchmen,” I said.
Sure enough, two figures emerged out of the billowing smoke. Wild-eyed, they were holding their mana-rifles. They reminded me a little of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid running out to face their last fray.
My two Arcane Mines went off with dull whoomphs. The two fleeing henchmen were illuminated for the briefest of moments as the Storm Magic inside the mines held them in its grip. Then they were lost in a burst of earth. There were a couple of final thumps as two larger pieces of their bodily remains landed in the street some distance away.
“Well, I can’t imagine there’ll be that many remaining in the club,” the Jotunn woman said. “Thanks very much for your help. We appreciate it when we get a few War Mages in training in the area when the shit goes down.”
She clapped me on the shoulder. Leah blew the woman a kiss.
“That’s it? I’m not going to be interrogated or something?” I blurted as the group of armored safety officers walked toward the burning club to investigate. “Even though we just had to kill a bunch of criminals and burn a building to the ground?”
“I told you, Justin,” Mort said in his quiet, civil tone. “This place exists outside of laws. You reap what you sow here, as the expression goes. This is, perhaps, the one place in all the wide world in which I have traveled where justice rules over law.”
“But still,” I said. “We don’t even need to fill out a form or something?”
Leah Chaosbane made a retching noise behind me. “Yuck. Forms.”
“I agree with my cousin,” Igor said, taking advantage of this bit of downtime so t
hat he could cock his head to one side and tip some sort of dust into his ear. “Paperwork is best left for later. When you have time on your hands and nothing better to do.” He shivered and a couple of sparks popped and crackled out of his other ear. “Like when you’re dead.”
The Jotunn woman looked back at me and shook her head, chuckling. Then, to my amazement, she strolled back and handed Mort a bit of paper.
“If you’re ever in my neighborhood,” she purred, the light of the growing fire behind her etching out a few scars on her shaved scalp, “feel free to come around and look me up.” She leaned in and whispered. “I’ve got a calendar with you on it…”
Then she was gone, marching off to issue orders to her minions.
I stared after her and then looked around at my friends. “Right, I guess we can go home.”
As we started making our way back down Powder Lane, toward the portal that would return us to Nevermoor, Leah lit one of her fragrant cigarettes and blew out a plume of clove-scented smoke.
“There’s only one thing I want to know,” she said.
“What’s that?” Janet asked, from where she was sitting in my arms. “How that fat bastard back there managed to get the drop on me?”
Leah gave her a puzzled look. “No, sweetpea, not that.” She twirled a finger through a pink pigtail and smiled at Mort. “I wish to know how the devil our dear, modest cousin made his way into the calendar of Bounty Hunters Monthly.”
Chapter Six
The feeling in Janet’s legs came back as we wended our way through the backstreets of Nevermoor. We were making a concerted effort not to garner any more attention than was strictly necessary and so Janet waited until we were in a deserted lane before she asked me to put her down.
“Just give me a sec,” she said as I helped her over to a low dry stack stone wall.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked. “I don’t mind carrying you further. You’re not that heavy.”
Janet grinned. “First you come to my rescue like some knight out of the old stories—”